People of the Revolution and the USSR

Nationalism 1865–1927 ○ Angina

Armenian fedayi commander who rejected the Republic of Armenia and held Zangezur with his own division

Born in Shabin-Karahisar in the Ottoman Empire in 1865, he led fedayi units of the Dashnaktsutyun and in the First World War commanded the first Armenian volunteer battalion of the Russian army. Refusing to recognize the Republic of Armenia or the Treaty of Batum, he took control of Zangezur with his Special Striking Division in 1918. The historian Donald Bloxham writes that he sought to make it homogeneously Armenian by destroying Muslim villages, while Antranig Chalabian argues that he saved Zangezur’s Armenians from annihilation. In December 1918 he halted his advance into Karabakh at British request, and in 1919 he disbanded his unit. He died in Fresno, California, in 1927.

Nationalism 1868–1941? Missing; presumed dead

Estonian prime minister who concluded the Treaty of Tartu, publisher of Postimees

As Soviet forces occupied Estonia in June 1940, he urged President Päts to offer at least symbolic armed resistance.

Leader of Estonia's liberal national movement through the newspaper Postimees, he was prime minister in 1919 and 1920 and concluded the Treaty of Tartu. Pushed out for opposing Päts's authoritarian regime in 1934, he was arrested after the Soviet occupation of 1940 and disappeared.

Polish Socialist Party (PPS) Nationalism 1871–1949 ○ Natural causes

An Endecja theorist who pressed for a Polish nation-state

At Riga, abandoning the demand for Minsk turned Poland’s eastern policy from a federal project toward a nation-state settlement.

Stanisław Grabski was an economist and politician who began in the socialist movement before becoming one of the leading theorists of Poland’s National Democracy, or Endecja. He tied independence and state unity closely to national homogeneity and opposed a federation that would incorporate large Ukrainian and Belarusian populations. During the Minsk and Riga negotiations in 1920, he supported abandoning the demand for Minsk, weakening Piłsudski’s eastern federal project and helping define the Riga settlement as a Polish nation-state. He later served as education minister and held senior positions in the government-in-exile and the postwar state, while distancing himself from Endecja after 1926 and revising parts of his political stance.

Lithuania state institutions Nationalism 1874–1944 ✕ Died in a fire

Lithuania's first president who led the declaration of independence, later leader of the 1926 coup

Before leaving the presidential palace he declared, "I do not want to make Lithuania a bolshevik country with my own hands."

Chairman of the Lithuanian Council, he signed the 1918 declaration of independence and as first president from 1919 led the governments that fought the Red Army, Bermondt's troops and the Poles. He built an authoritarian regime after the 1926 coup and, fleeing the Soviet occupation of 1940, died in a fire in the United States in 1944.

Nationalism 1874–1945 → Died in exile

Dashnak foreign minister and prime minister of the First Republic of Armenia who signed the treaties of Batum and Alexandropol

Born in Tbilisi in 1874 to a prominent Armenian family of noble origins, he trained as a doctor, was mayor of Tbilisi from 1910 to 1917 and in 1914 organized the Armenian volunteer detachments. He joined the Dashnaktsutyun in 1917. As foreign minister of the Republic of Armenia he signed the Treaty of Batum in June 1918, and he was prime minister from May 1919 until he resigned after the May Uprising of 1920. On 3 December 1920 a delegation led by him signed the Treaty of Alexandropol with Kâzım Karabekir, but power had already passed to the Soviet authorities and the treaty is held to be invalid. He went into exile in Paris and died there in 1945.

Czechoslovakia Nationalism 1874–1945 ○ Died in Soviet custody

Greek Catholic priest who became president of Carpatho-Ukraine when it declared independence in March 1939

The son of a Greek Catholic priest in Carpathian Ruthenia, then part of Austria-Hungary, he studied at the Ungvár school of theology and at Budapest University and was ordained. In 1918 he became head of the Subcarpathian National Council, which in 1919 asked for the region to join Czechoslovakia. In 1925 he was elected to the parliament in Prague as leader of the Ruthenian National Christian Party, and in October 1938 he was appointed head of the government of the Subcarpathian Autonomous Region. On 15 March 1939 he became president of Carpatho-Ukraine, but the next day Hungary occupied and annexed the region; he fled to Prague and spent the war as a professor at the Ukrainian Free University. Arrested by the NKVD when the Soviet army took Prague in May 1945, he was taken to Moscow and died in Butyrka prison in July.

Nationalism 1876–1954 ○ Died in prison

Veteran of the Bessarabian national movement who, as foreign minister of the Moldavian Democratic Republic, championed union with Romania

Born in Răzeni, Bessarabia, in 1876, he graduated from the Chișinău seminary in 1898 and in law from the University of Dorpat in 1903. Arrested as a student for founding an association of Bessarabian students, he later worked as a deputy judge in Bălți and created the town’s first national group. He joined the National Moldavian Party in 1917 and initially won a majority for president of Sfatul Țării, but the post went to Inculeț. As foreign minister in the Erhan and Ciugureanu cabinets in 1917–1918 he sought military aid from Shcherbachev in Iași and campaigned for union. He then served as Minister of Justice under Vaida-Voevod, worked in Paris, London and Geneva for recognition of the union and sat in parliament for the National Party and the National Peasants’ Party. Arrested by the communist authorities in 1950, he died in Sighet Prison in 1954.

Latvia state institutions Nationalism 1877–1942 ○ Died in prison

Latvia's prime minister in the war of independence, later dictator after the 1934 coup

On the day of the occupation his radio address ordered no resistance: "I will remain in my place and you remain in yours."

Prime minister of Latvia's provisional government from November 1918, he survived the Soviet army, a German coup and Bermondt's army in turn and led the Riga peace and land reform of 1920. He set up a dictatorship by coup in 1934 and, deported by the Soviets in 1940, died in prison in 1942.

Nationalism 1878–1957 → Died in exile

Tatar lawyer and Duma deputy who headed the national administration of Idel-Ural

Born in 1878 in the village of Tashsu near Kazan, he studied law at the University of Paris in 1901–1906 on Ismail Gasprinsky’s advice. In 1906 he joined the Central Committee of Ittifaq al-Muslimin, and he sat for Kazan province in the Second and Third State Dumas. In 1917 he was on the executive committee of the All-Russian Muslim Council, and on 5 January 1918 he was elected chairman of the Milli Idare, the body of national-cultural autonomy of the Muslims of Inner Russia and Siberia, becoming head of the Idel-Ural State. When the Bolsheviks took Kazan and Ufa provinces he fled to Finland; at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 he pleaded for the peoples of Idel-Ural, without result. He moved to Turkey in 1925, became a professor of legal history and a member of parliament, and died in Istanbul in 1957.

Belarus state institutions Nationalism 1879–1928 → Died in exile

Chairman of the Rada of the Belarusian People’s Republic from 1919 until his death, leading it in exile from Prague

Born in 1879 into the family of a village church deacon in the Grodno Governorate, he graduated from the seminary in Vilnius, worked as a teacher and from 1909 was employed at the Vilnius State Bank. In 1917, as chairman of the Borisov Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, he was a delegate to the First All-Belarusian Congress and joined its executive committee. In 1918 he was state controller and then secretary for finance and for trade in the People’s Secretariat, and became one of the leaders of the Socialist Federalist party. He became chairman of the Rada on 13 December 1919, went into exile in 1920 and represented the Rada from Kaunas and Berlin and, from 1923, Prague. In 1921 he organised a conference in Prague that condemned the Peace of Riga, and in 1925 he refused to accept the decision to dissolve the government in exile. He died in Prague in 1928.

Turkey state institutions Nationalism 1881–1922 ✕ Killed fighting the Red Army

War minister among the Three Pashas who took the Ottomans into the war and was a main perpetrator of the Armenian genocide

Born in Constantinople, he joined the Committee of Union and Progress and became a hero of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. After the 1913 coup he became war minister and ruled the empire with Talat and Djemal as the Three Pashas. He took the Ottomans into the First World War in alliance with Germany, and after losing most of his army at Sarıkamış in December 1914 blamed the defeat on the Armenians. He was a main perpetrator of the Armenian, Greek and Assyrian genocides. After the defeat he fled and was sentenced to death in absentia. He worked with the Bolsheviks, then in 1921 in Central Asia went over to the Basmachi rebels, and was killed fighting the Red Army in 1922.

Turkey state institutions Nationalism 1881–1938 ○ Natural death

Gallipoli commander who led the national movement and founded the Republic of Turkey as its first president

Born in Salonica, he joined the Young Turk movement and made his name defending Gallipoli in the First World War. After the defeat he landed at Samsun in May 1919 to organise the national movement against occupation, and in 1920 convened the Grand National Assembly in Ankara. With gold and arms from the Bolshevik government he defeated the Greek army, and the Treaty of Lausanne recognised the victory. In these years the ethnic cleansing of Anatolia’s Armenians and Greeks was completed through massacres, deportations and population exchange. He abolished the sultanate in 1922 and in 1923 became the first president of the republic, pursuing secularising reforms and Turkification under one-party rule. He died in 1938.

Turkey state institutions Nationalism 1882–1948 ○ Heart attack

Eastern Front commander of the Turkish War of Independence who invaded Armenia in 1920 and imposed the Treaty of Alexandropol

Born in Istanbul in 1882, he graduated at the top of his class from the Ottoman Military College and fought at Gallipoli, at Kut and on the Caucasus front in the First World War. Joining Mustafa Kemal’s national movement, he commanded the Eastern Front in the War of Independence. He invaded Armenia in September 1920 and took Kars and Alexandropol; during the campaign his army displaced and massacred tens of thousands of Armenian civilians. He signed the Treaty of Alexandropol in December and the Treaty of Kars in 1921. In 1924 he founded the Progressive Republican Party, the first opposition party, which was closed; elected speaker of the Grand National Assembly in 1946, he died in office in 1948.

Belarus state institutions Nationalism 1883–1938 ✕ Executed by shooting

Historian who headed the government of the Belarusian People’s Republic in exile, moved to Soviet Byelorussia and was executed

Born into a landless noble family in the Disna district of the Vilna Governorate in 1883, he had almost no formal schooling. He was active in the Hramada in 1906–1908, was editorial secretary of Nasha Niva and from 1915 openly advocated independence from both Russia and Poland. In 1918 he joined the Rada as a delegate of the Belarusian Council of Vilnius, and in 1919 he led the Belarusian Socialist Revolutionaries. Appointed prime minister in December 1919, he was soon arrested by the Polish authorities; released the following year, he went to Riga and toured European capitals seeking recognition until he stepped down in 1923. In 1927 he moved to Soviet Byelorussia, where he became director of the State Museum and a member of the Academy of Sciences, but he was arrested in 1930, exiled to Saratov and shot in 1938.

Lithuania state institutions Nationalism 1883–1942 ○ Died in prison

Lithuania's first prime minister, later leader of the far-right Iron Wolf

Dissolving the Seimas in 1928, he quipped that he had promised to hold elections but had made no promise about the year.

Prime minister and foreign minister of Lithuania's first cabinet in November 1918, he later fought the Vilnius question in Paris and at the League of Nations. Prime minister again after the 1926 coup, he led the far-right Iron Wolf, broke with Smetona and died in a Soviet prison in 1942.

Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR/SR) Nationalism 1883–1979 ○ Died

Journalist and politician who, as vice-president and later president of Sfatul Țării, led the movement for Bessarabia’s union with Romania

Born to poor peasants in Cubolta, Bessarabia, in 1883, he graduated from the Chișinău seminary and entered the University of Yuryev, but as a Socialist Revolutionary had to quit after the 1905 revolution. Sought by the Tsarist authorities after printing the hymn “Deșteaptă-te, române!”, he took refuge in Iași and studied there in 1908–1912. From 1913 he published the newspaper Cuvânt moldovenesc in Chișinău, writing unceasingly for union, and in 1917 he founded the Moldovan National Party. He was elected first vice-president, then president of Sfatul Țării. After 1918 he served as minister for Bessarabia and in other posts and joined the National Peasants’ Party; in 1924 he accused the Romanian government of turning Bessarabia into an “inferno”. Arrested in 1950, he was sentenced in the Soviet Union to 25 years’ hard labour, was held until 1957 and died in 1979.

Nationalism 1884–1955 → Died in exile

Musavat leader who headed the Azerbaijani National Council that declared the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in 1918

Born near Baku in 1884, he founded Hummet, a Muslim social-democratic organization, in 1904. He took part in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution in 1909, and after returning to Baku in 1913 he became the chief of Musavat. As head of the Azerbaijani National Council he declared the independence of the Azerbaijan Republic on 28 May 1918. After the republic fell in 1920 he directed resistance until his arrest, but because he had once hidden Joseph Stalin from the police he was released and taken to Moscow. He escaped to Finland in 1922, lived in exile in Turkey, Poland and Romania, and died in Ankara in 1955.

Turkey state institutions Nationalism 1884–1973 ○ Natural death

Officer who negotiated the Treaty of Lausanne and succeeded Atatürk as Turkey’s second president

Born in Smyrna, an Ottoman officer, he won the First and Second Battles of İnönü in the War of Independence as chief of the General Staff and commander of the Western Front. As Turkey’s chief negotiator at Lausanne in 1922–1923 he faced down Curzon and replaced the Treaty of Sèvres with the Treaty of Lausanne. As prime minister for most of Atatürk’s presidency he carried out the secularising reforms; after the Sheikh Said revolt he pushed the Turkification of the Kurds, and he is considered one of those responsible for the Dersim massacre. Elected second president in 1938, he took the title “National Chief” and kept Turkey in armed neutrality in the Second World War. After defeat in the 1950 election he handed over power peacefully. He died in 1973.

Nationalism 1885–1918 ✕ Murdered

First head of the Crimean People’s Republic, the first elected mufti of Crimea and the poet of the Crimean Tatar anthem

Born in 1885 in the village of Büyük Sonaq near Dzhankoy, the son of an imam, he went to Istanbul in 1908 to study law and theology, founded the Young Tatar Writers’ Association and the secret organisation Vatan (Homeland), and returned to Crimea in 1912. In March 1917 he became chairman of the Crimean Muslim Executive Committee and the first mufti of Crimea elected by delegates rather than appointed by the Minister of the Interior. Arrested in June for anti-government agitation, he was freed after a protest bearing 5,000 signatures. He prepared the Qurultay and in December became chairman and director of justice of the Directory of the Crimean People’s Republic, but was arrested by the Bolsheviks in January 1918 and killed without trial by sailors in Sevastopol on 23 February. His poem “Ant etkenmen” became the Crimean Tatar national anthem.

Hungary Nationalism 1886–1944 ✕ Executed by hanging

National radical politician who denounced the Novi Sad massacre in parliament and was executed for preparing an anti-Nazi uprising

He was born at Szarvas. In 1923 he founded the Guardians of Race Party with Gömbös but drew away, forming the National Radical Party in 1930; in the 1930s he turned to speaking out against antisemitism. In 1939 he returned to parliament for the Independent Smallholders’ Party. Turning against the war in late 1941, he called in the Christmas issue of Népszava for an Independence Front to take Hungary out of the war and bring land reform and universal suffrage; in January 1942 he warned Bárdossy of the coming Novi Sad massacre and then denounced it in parliament as “a state-organized pogrom”. Wounded in a gunfight resisting arrest when the Germans occupied Hungary on 19 March 1944, he was freed in October and in November elected president of the Liberation Committee of the Hungarian National Uprising, but was arrested again and hanged at Sopronkőhida on 24 December.

Nationalism 1889–1960 → Died in exile

Crimean Tatar politician who ran the military and foreign affairs of the Crimean People’s Republic and led the national movement in exile

Born in 1889 into a family of wealthy peasants in Kizil-Tash in the Yalta district, he met Noman Çelebicihan at the law faculty of Istanbul University. After publishing The Oppressed Crimean Tatar Nation in the 20th Century in 1911 he escaped arrest by studying in Paris, and on his return in 1914 he went through cadet school and became an ensign. In 1917 he briefly edited Millet and became director of military and foreign affairs in the Directory set up by the Qurultay. Driven out by the Bolsheviks in January 1918, he fled to Kyiv; under the German occupation he became foreign minister of Sulkiewicz’s Crimean Regional Government and sought recognition of its independence in Berlin. After the German withdrawal he went to Istanbul, founded the newspaper Emel and supported Prometheism. He took the surname Kırımer in 1934 and died in Istanbul in 1960.

Estonia state institutions Nationalism 1890–1945 ○ Died of cancer in exile in Sweden

Law professor and Estonia’s last constitutional prime minister who, acting as president, formed the Tief government in 1944

Born in Kirbla Parish in the Governorate of Estonia, he studied law at St Petersburg University and taught Roman and Estonian law at the University of Tartu until 1944. Editor-in-chief of Postimees and speaker of the lower chamber, he was prime minister from 1939 until Soviet troops entered Estonia in June 1940; after President Konstantin Päts was arrested by the Soviets he became, under the constitution, prime minister in the duties of the president. On 29 July 1941 he asked the Germans to let him form an independent government and was refused, and he declined to head the Self-Administration. On 7 February 1944 he appealed by radio for men to answer the call-up, and 38,000 registered. In June he appointed Otto Tief deputy prime minister, and in September, as the Germans withdrew, formed the Tief government. He then reached Sweden, where he died of gastric cancer in January 1945.

Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks Nationalism 1890–1970 → Died in exile

Leader of the Bashkir national movement who proclaimed Bashkir autonomy, commanded the Bashkir Army and took it over to the Soviet side

Born in 1890 in Kuzyanovo, Ufa province, he taught Turkic history at the Qasimiya madrasa in Kazan. In 1917 he joined the Socialist Revolutionaries and was elected to the Constituent Assembly; with Sharif Manatov he organised the Bashkir Central Shuro, proclaimed Bashkir autonomy and became commander of the Bashkir Army. Arrested by the Bolsheviks in February 1918 and freed in April, he fought alongside Dutov and Kolchak, but in February 1919 took his troops over to the Soviet side. He became chairman of the Bashrevkom in 1920, resigned in June in protest at the curtailing of autonomy and led the Basmachi movement in Turkestan. He emigrated in 1923, became a Turkish citizen in 1925, a professor at Istanbul University and a doctor of the University of Vienna, and died in Istanbul in 1970.